So I Met Ricky Deeming
by KiplingKat
Summary: In response to a fanfic challenge: What would happen if I met Ricky Deeming of "Inspector George Gently"?
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimers: _

_A. Don't own Ricky Deeming or the George Gently - verse, not making any money off this, and have severe doubts anyone could. _

_B. This story was written as a great conceit. I believe strongly in the rule of fanfic that reads: "No one gives a crap about your Mary Sue." But we were presented with a challenge on the IMDB Richard Armitage board: "You'll Never Guess Who I Ran Into…" in which "we can imagine what it would be like to bump into one of RA's characters and what occurs." So I came up with this story and a couple others, and have decided to move them here so they do not get lost. I beg forgiveness, and hope that readers can use my Mary Sue/Author Avatar as a lens through which to get to know these characters better. _

_For those interested in the character of Ricky, the episode of George Gently (it's the Pilot) is up on YouTube in HD. _

Part I

It's 1962 and I, being me, am not waiting at home from some socially approved swain to sweep me off my feet, but have bought a motorcycle and am cruising around Europe. Heading up the coast of Northumberland, I come cross a little roadside dinner with a row of motorcycles lines up in front. I park and enter to find myself facing a gaggle of young men in riding leathers who have noted my arrival with surprise that a woman (*gasp!*) would be out riding on her own.

Of course, since I am also soul-stirringly gorgeous in this Mary Sue fantasy, not to mention rather exotic being American and a female motorcycle rider on my own, while I am trying to drink my tea and eat lunch in one of the booths I am chatting with and fending off the flirtatious attentions of the lads. Since they take my attention, I do not notice the rather large man in black leather at the end of counter who quietly sips his coffee until the boys get a little too pushy and rowdy.

Until suddenly he is towering among them, growling at them to "Push off" with a gentle scowl and few playful shoves.

"Sorry about them."

"Not a problem," I smile in amusement, "but I appreciate the assist."

He slides into the booth and orders another coffee from the proprietor.

_Oh dear,_ I realize, _that wasn't an assist. I've been claimed._

Suppressing a grin I look the alpha male over. His dark hair is lightly tousled, but deliberately *just so*. Handsome, certainly. A set of finely chiseled features set in a soft rectangular face giving an impression of both masculine strength and masculine beauty. I can just see the hollow of his throat between the edges of his flannel shirt. His broad shoulders fill the leather jacket he wears that is well cared for, but worn soft and flexible with consonant use. There's a working reality under the flash. And the hands, one crushing a cigarette out in the ashtray while the other wraps almost completely around the cup brought to him, long slender musicians fingers on large square workman's palms. Like his face they are a mixture of a raw masculinity and a cultured delicacy. An intriguing paradox dominated by an amused, lop sided smirk and deep set eyes the color of a winter sky.

"Do I pass muster then, love?"

Caught out, I blush but reply, "For now."

He chuckles, the smirk flashing into a brilliant smile for only a moment.

I decide I don't mind being claimed. Or least I don't mind him trying.

...


	2. Chapter 2

Part II

"Where are you goin'?" The "r"'s roll slightly. The voice is deep. A rich timbre with a bit of a biting edge to it. A touch of velvet foam edging a rough sea.

"I dunno."

Another flash of a smile, "Good answer."

"I don't even know where I am."

He leans back against the seat looking at me down his nose, examining me as I did him a few moments ago. "No. You look like you know exactly where you are."

I give him a conspiratorial glance, "Looks can be deceiving."

"Well, you're a few miles south of Heddon."

"And where is that?"

"The beautiful backside of nowhere, where the road runs gently along curves of the land as she rises and falls as deep and easy as the breath of a sleeping goddess." He says easily, with a bit of cheek and pride, though whether in his home country or his poetic expression I can't tell. Probably both.

"And what happens when she wakes?"

The eyebrows pop slightly in pleasant surprise as he considers, "Well, then you open the throttle and hang on for dear life."

There's a pause as we consider each other. I don't ask his name, he doesn't ask mine.

"Sounds like you have been riding around here a while."

"Here, and elsewhere. Been all up and down this Island."

"Really?" Here I was thinking he was the old BMOC. A big fish in a small pond, dragging out the glory days of his adolescence.

"Yeah. When I was younger, the world was a lot smaller. I thought it was this place, so I took off for the city. Spent two years there, London, renting a room. Working my way from a junkyard to a mechanic's shop."

"And the world was still small?"

I've surprised him again.

"Going to the same pubs, seeing the same films. Hanging out with same kind of people. Dating the same girls. The same rut. The only difference was the density."

"So what did you do?"

He gestures out the window to the gleaming silver Manx Norton. "Customer brought a bike in for repairs. Not that one, of course. An old Enfield. Never picked it up, couldn't afford the repairs probably. I just needed to get place to place without relying on the Tube, so I worked off the repairs for a month and it was mine."

"Let me guess, love at first ride?"

"No," As he fishes a tobacco pouch out of an inner jacket pocket. He asks the question with his eyes and I wave him on. "No, it took me weeks to get really comfortable on the thing, and it needed a lot more work before she really ran smooth. It was just a motorcycle…until one night," He pauses to seal the cigarette paper, "One night I'm coming home late, really late. It's three, three thirty. The drunks have long gone home." He lights it and flicks the lighter closed with a practiced motion as he draws the smoke in deep. "Cops are dozing in their cars. And I'd been working on the thing for month, getting her to run like she should. I'm coming up along Whitchapel and I reach Commercial Road, just a wide open stretch with no cars or trucks on it for once, and think, "I'm just going to open it up for a bit. I'm just going to see what it can do."

He pauses dramatically as he flicks the ash away. I wait him out, not giving the required "And?" of a rapt audience.

"Opening that throttle was like opening some part of my soul I hadn't known was there. It was like the spirit of that old bike woke up and reached right through me, marrying us both to that dark road in perfect motion. I don't know if I would have ever stopped….if I hadn't almost crashed into a lorry coming out the docks." He finishes with a self depreciating chuckle.

I give him an understanding smile, "At the risk of sounding terribly gauche, it's like making love for the first time. You love it, but it takes you a while to get good at it."

This time the eyebrows practically shoot into his scalp in surprise, but he quickly recovers. "So you're good at it then?"

The voice is innocuous, but the eyes are filled with lascivious merriment.

I blush again, but reply evenly from behind my tea cup, "Well, that's not for me to say is it? So I take it the road beckoned? " I say, switching the topic back to safer ground.

...


	3. Chapter 3

Part III

"Not quite. In that moment, I had the vaguest glimpse of what life could be. For that brief moment my soul was free, but I didn't understand what it was. I looked at the world around me, ticking away like clockwork, everyone accepting it as it was, just falling into their place whether it made them happy or sad or mad. The only way a man to act out was to be a hypocrite, little woman at home, little woman on the side. Standing in front of the vicar saying his prayers the morning after he drank or gambled or whored his paycheck away. Or worse, the ones that did not act out. Wound so tight you could practically hear the gears spring if you rubbed 'em the wrong way, challenged their little preconceived notions."

I'm getting a speech, well prepared and probably performed numerous times, but his voice has taken on a biting edge, an honest anger and bitterness.

"Went for months thinking I was crazy." He continues, "The only one who was really seeing things for what they were, until I found other riders, others that had touched that dark dangerous moment and loved it as I did. And then a mate of shoved this beat up copy of "On The Road" into my hand."

"No going back then…"

He shakes his head as he tamps out the smoke, "Never, never. I was never much of a reader. No one ever expected it did they? Working class kid like me. But I finished that book in two days and just took off. Got on that old Enfield and rode, just rode, trying to wrap my head around it, the fullness of those intense moments. What it said life could be, should be. I was riding for three days before I actually picked my head up from the road and realized I had no idea where I was."

"And you realized that was o.k."

"Yes!" He leans forward eagerly, "Because I knew *who* I was. As long as you know that, where you are and more importantly, what people say you are doesn't matter. Sure I got a shyte job at the knackers. "Never get ahead in the world doing that, Ricky." the mundane plods say. But my mind is my own. I'm free to think every moment of the day as them, in their starched suits and mortgages, sitting at their desks from 8 to 6 shuffling papers to and fro, never will be."

"But in "On The Road" in the end Dean caves in and Sal bemoans growing old."

"You've read it?"

"I have to confess I have not, but several of my friends have, so I'm somewhat familiar with it."

"You have got to read that book."

"I will take that under advisement."

He sits back again, amused at my clear deflection of his authority. He's used to people doing what he says, but is not threatened by someone who does not. What refreshing moment that is, to encounter a man who is not put off by an independent woman and a person who actually practices what they preach.

"So what your story then?" he asks.

"Not much to tell really."

"Woman on her own, on a bike, an ocean way from home. I'd say there is something to tell."

"Home." I echo. "I'm not even sure what that means."

"They say it's where your heart is." he says flippantly.

"My heart is right here." I tap my chest, "Which means home is right here I guess. Still it would be nice to find someplace that felt…right."

"Oh, don't disappoint me, pet. You aren't looking for a house and yard and a pack of spoiled kids?"

I wave my hand up and down my boots, jeans, and flannel, no cosmetics, my hair yanked back into a braid, and ask incredulously, "Do I look like I'm cruising for a Mr.?"

He holds his hands up to fend me off, but I'm on a bit of a roll. "You sit there and bemoan the fate of men being locked down in society, what about women who've been raised to believe that the only worth they have to contribute is their husbands and their kids? You want to talk about trapped, just look at some of the women in those mortgaged houses. Can't even get a job without the neighbors looking at them cross eyed, "Dear me, Mrs. Smith is going to work. They must be in serious financial trouble!" Couldn't possibly be the Mrs. Smith just wanted a little bit of her own life."

"But isn't motherhood, finding a man to provide for you and give you kids, isn't that they way women are built?"

The old "Women are constructed to be traps" argument. Jesus.

"If women are all predestined to be mothers," I reply, "…then that would mean men are all predestined to be fathers. If we are to be limited by our genetic programming, then you have to have tons of kids all over the place and provide for *all* of them. Preferably by hunting mammoths. On foot. If you want freedom from the roles ordained by society for you, you have to give women the same freedoms."

He rolls that one around for a moment. "Alright. I apologize. I take it back."

"Hrm." say I, blatantly enjoying the shift in dominance in the conversation. "Just this once, I'll allow it."

The amused smirk is back. He's not giving an inch, but he's looking at me a little more seriously. I'm not just an audience anymore. I've given him something to think about and he actually likes it.

Very refreshing.

His friends are ready to leave and a couple of them come over to ask if he's coming.

"Go on. I'll catch up with you lot tomorrow. What?" he replies to the boy's "sophisticated knowing glance" in my direction. "I have nursemaid you every second of the day? Shove off!" But the smile is open and the banter friendly until the last one is out the door.

"They're young." I observe quietly.

"Yeah, kids mostly. Coming out of school with nothing to look forward to but barely scratching a living out of a dead end jobs, or landing in jail."

"And you give them a place to belong?"

He shrugs, "They need to know someone understands where they're coming from, that they don't have to take the bullshit the world says they have to. Encourage them to think for themselves."

I smile a bit as I consider just how much "thinking for themselves" they are doing under his dominating personality. There something more he's not telling, something else that makes his angry rejection of society so personal. Maybe he sees the question in my eyes when he turns the conversation back on me.

"So" He waves the empty cup at the proprietor. "You say you have no home, can you at least tell me where you are from?"

I tell him about the trees and rocks, rivers and ocean of Maine. I watch his eyes light up eagerly when I talk about the long open roads of the South West where the highway stretches out straight as an arrow for miles and miles and there is nothing but you and the bike and the road. I talk about the curving roads and gorgeous overlooks of the Blue Ridge mountains, rolling seas of green trees fading away into smoky blues. He counters with what he has seen riding up and down Britain, working odd jobs here and there, earning enough to get him to the next village or city. From the green fields of Kent to the rocky shores of his home.

"So in the end you came back."

"I was born here. It's in my blood and my bones and the grit in my nails. When I crossed back into the moors and it was like being purified, washed free of the muck I'd picked up along the way. It's as much a part of me as the bike is. It's open, like what you described in Arizona, but the road also has enough curves and tricks to keep you on your toes. You never get bored riding up here. You can master the road, but you can never be sure of it. But…" He sets his second cup of coffee down empty and stands "…if you like a view, you should come with me."


	4. Chapter 4

Part IV

"Should I follow you?"

Checks paid and we're outside the cafe, helmets in hand.

"The Bonneville. Nice choice." He crouches down to look at the engine.

"Not quite as nice as the Manx."

He looks back over his shoulder at the silver machine, practically gleaming with pride as much as it does. "The frame, the featherweight puts the center of gravity lower to the road so it handles better. But for engines, this…" He turns back to my Triumph and runs his finger along the airfoils. "…is a thing of beauty. Tell you what." He stands and swings his leg over the seat, flashing that boyishly cocky smile. "Why waste the petrol?"

That he did not suggest his bike does not bother me, the Norton does not seat two. That I am about to head off into the wilds of Northumberland with a rather large, strange man with no individual means of escape? Well, what's life without a little adventure? I deposit the saddlebags with the cafe owner and come back out to climb on behind the A.M.

Alpha Male. I'm considering calling him "C.A.M." Consummate Alpha Male. But it seems to be a natural part of him rather than a show put on for others, so it doesn't bother me as it normally does in other men.

As I have ridden as a passenger before, I know to put my hands on his hips. Honestly that's why I do it. Really. He is a much more experienced and confident rider than I am who obviously knows these roads intimately. After a few shake down miles in which he gets the feel of the bike and realizes I'm an experienced passenger that trusts him enough to follow his movements, he opens another gear up and lets the Triumph engine sing. We are flying up the hills and down the small gullies. I follow his shifting weight so that we are hugging the asphalt through smooth swift turns, just enjoying the feel and flow the road. Watching the cliff of the coastline as it sweeps in and out, a dance between the road and the sea.

He slows the bike to a stop at top of a cliff face overlooking a small secluded beach of white sand, the waves of the North Sea breaking in last of the sunlight behind us.

"It's beautiful." I say as we take off our helmets.

He only looks over his shoulder with a soft smile and pats my thigh to tell me dismount. I follow him to a narrow trail switch-backing down a ravine, taking the hand he holds out to guide me down the rather treacherous path.

I am not a slight woman, so when a man's hand is big enough to encompass mine, I notice.

And shiver a little bit in delight.

He does not release my hand when we get to the bottom and we walk in silence, savoring the rugged austere beauty of this little untouched place.

Eventually the suns set far enough and the bay is cast in shadow, the waves losing their dancing glints.

"You should see this place at sunrise, when the sun rises and brings the waves to life with light, the kiss of her warmth in the cold, damp spray." He says.

I murmur an assent. It is truly lovely, but I have no illusions about being the first woman he's brought down here and it's going to take more than a romantic view to sway me. I want to know who I'm dealing with. I can't figure out a way to tactfully guide the current un-conversation to it, so I ask outright.

"Why are you so angry?"

He looks at me quizzically with an edge of annoyance. "I thought I explained that." The unspoken accusation, _I thought you understood._

"Oh, you explained the intellectual reasons, but your anger is more than a philosophical difference of opinion. It's personal. Why?"

He drops my hand to consider me for a moment, weighing options, weighing me.

He leans up against the rocks, shifting uncomfortably. I lean next to him.

"I was in Bristol a few years back, well, several years back now. I found a group of mates that had some of the same ideas. And...you know with that lot, drugs are around. I tried some. It was o.k. if you couldn't get out to the open road, but nothing compared to riding, the real kick. Just wasn't a big deal for me, and it wasn't a big deal for me mate Paul. Paul, he wasn't just the best laugh, he was the kind of person you could call from a phone box in the middle of nowhere at 3:30 am because you broken down and he'd be there to pick you up by sunrise. Just the best kind of person. But more than that, the way he saw the world, from the sunrise over the spires of Radcliffe to the oil slicks on the river, was glorious. He could see the entirety of human existence, its beauty and its depravity, in a single alley and put it into the most amazing words." There a pause as he clears his throat before his voice drops back into a grounded quality I have not quite heard from him yet. "I knew Paul never got up before noon, and I knew he did not spend his time in the dole queue, and yet he always seemed to be in cash. Not a lot, just enough to get by with. Have a bit of fun. With all the visitors and the drugs around, despite the fact that he didn't use them, it didn't take me long to figure out what he did for a living."

"What are you doing?" He has been toying with my braid for the last couple minutes, and has started working at the elastic.

"Nothin', just...seeing what you really look like."

He's nervous, and he can't roll a cigarette so he's fidgeting with my hair.

"So there's me and Paul, in the moment. Kerouac and Cassady in the U.K.. Not doing anyone any harm, really. A couple joy rides here and there, a couple brawls. Mostly with a gang of the dock workers who also rode. They saw it as a turf war; we saw it as fun way to spend a Saturday night stirring up a hornet's nest. Until one night I don't look at who I'm swinging at."

"Oh no."

"My solicitor was able to convince the jury that he had not identified himself as a police officer, which if he did I hadn't heard it. So I only got six months for battery...That's better...Wow."

He worked my hair loose from the braid and as fine as it is, it's blowing about my face in the sea breeze which I suppose must look alluring, but honestly trying to see through an ever moving strawberry-blonde cloud, which also gets in your mouth, is annoying. It doesn't help when he plucks the glasses of my face and tucks them into his jacket.

"I can't see two feet in front of me without those."

"Well, you'll have to stick close then." he replies cheekily, leaning in.

"So," I lean back instead, bringing him back from his flirtatious derailment of topic, "Prison..."

There's a frustrated frown that I'm not letting him get away with it, before he looks out to sea. "So, prison. You want to talk about the system, man. That is its ultimate expression, the most honest, un-hypocritical reality of it. Everything you do, every movement, every breath is controlled. Everyone kept in neat rows. Everyone the same and if you aren't the same you get beat back into shape so you are. The whole point is to put the entire weight of society on you, like some domineering parent putting the lean on a kid based on the idea that human being can't think for himself."

"How did you handle it?"

"Read a lot, wrote some. It got me through."

That's part of it, but not all. "What happened to Paul?"

"I heard from him the first couple months, even came up to visit me a few times. And then...nothing. No word, he was just gone…" I wait out his little internal struggle quietly. "Our other friends, they weren't the type for letters, so I waited until I was released I came back to Bristol and tracked one of them down."

I have bad feeling about what's coming and place my hand over one of arms, which are now folded over his chest in tension.

"He'd been found face down in the river three months before."

"What happened?"

"Dunno. Probably someone he worked with or a competitor. I never knew that much about what Paul did. Hadn't wanted to know really."

"And the cops didn't..."

"The cops didn't even fucking try!" He jerks out of my grasp. His voice has dropped to a taught growl, filled with rage. "As far as they were concerned, it was another drug dealer off the street. Just made their life easier. Some stupid idiot hits a police officer and "Quick, protect the peace and lock him up!" But some poor guy, a good man of poetry and honor, dies and "Hey-ho, another file to be put in storage, my desk is a little cleaner." And what choice did Paul have really? Coming from the poor underbelly of the social order. He could have slaved his whole life away in the vain hopes of dying in debt to a bank mortgage, or he could have taken a route to easy money. Money that left him with time and energy to express himself, that let him be himself. You force a kid into choice like that and of course they are going to go outside the law, which they are then punished for. Second class citizen on one hand or deviant criminal on the other. The quintessential rock and a hard place. It showed me what the structure really was. It's not about protecting the peace. It's not about making the streets safe. It's about protecting their cars and their homes and their jobs and their perfectly ordered little worlds so their little lives can keep rolling on, safe and unchanging."

"I'm sorry."

"...I never get why people say that." He snaps sullenly, "You didn't do anything, why are you sorry?"

"I'm sorry you are hurting. I wish you weren't. I'm sorry I can't do anything about it. It sounds like you and Paul were really close."

"Yeah." He breathes deeply a few moments calming himself, "Yeah. Old scars."

"...Can I ask, how close?" I make the implication as gently as I can and get a guarded glare in response. "Look it doesn't matter to me. That's your business and hey, love is love no matter who it's between. I just want to know who I'm talking to...And if I've been lured here under false pretenses." I wink slyly.

The gear change throws him and he starts to laugh, releasing the built up tension in a deep baritone chortle that is...the most adorable thing I've ever heard. It subsides into a chuckle as looks at me in mock wariness. "You're a handful."

I nod formally in agreement, "That has been the general consensus."

"I like people. I like souls." He takes me in his arms, brushing the stray locks of my hair back, "I like you."

"You don't know me."

"I know there's a lot you aren't telling, keeping the spotlight on me, but I know enough. I know you don't even think about how different you are to be out here, riding alone. You just do what you do and what people think, good or bad, just rolls off you. I know you see the world in vibrant splashes of colour. I know you see things, little things, that other people don't. Your mind is constantly going, ticking off those little things. I bet you've counted every single sea gull that's flown by since we got here."

_11. Damn._ It's my turn to squirm, but his hands and his eyes hold me in place.

"You can enjoy the moment, but you are not fully in it. You're outside it, observing it. Those little clockwork gears in your head ticking away at a mile a minute."

"Nothing so sophisticated. It's a hamster on a wheel with an espresso IV drip."

"What are you afraid of, I wonder, that you can't just be?"

"I'm not af..."

Later, I would wonder how lips that chiseled and narrow could be that soft and sensual. But in that moment, I just. Stopped. Thinking.

...


	5. Chapter 5

Part V

By the time our lips part I have practically molded my body to his, hanging from his shoulders with my fingers latched into his jacket with an iron grip. When I can finally focus again, I'm expecting some smug comment, a warm look of benevolent conquest. I'm relieved that he looks as shaken as I feel; breathless, his blue eyes searching mine.

"Come on." He grabs my hand and strides toward the path up the ravine. As we reach it I retrieve my glasses from him so that I can get to the top without breaking my neck and, in a lovely analogy, the clarity of that little moment of mundane trivia gives me a much needed anchor. I know exactly where he is taking me and I know that it would be a mistake.

I also know I really don't want to throw a bucket of icewater on things just yet.

I watch him straddle the bike, starting to put his gloves on when it hits me. It's such a girlish fantasy, but it's more controlled environment than his place and...what the hell.

"Move back."

"I'm driving..."

His voice trails off as I put my glasses into my jacket and swing my leg over the gas tank to sit facing him.

"Move back."

He does so, chucking his helmet to the ground and pulling the one glove off with his teeth as he slides the other hand under my jacket to pull me in.

I can't tell you how long we are like that. I only remember his crisp masculine scent mingling with the rich smell of leather as I unzipped his jacket. His strong body and the feel of his warm skin under my hands. His sweet lips on mine and his breath on my neck. And having vague thoughts like...

_I really should stop that hand, the one under my shirt, the one gliding up my rib cage to …Oh god no I'm not. I'mnotI'mnotI'mnotI'm...* _

It was a one of the sweetest long whiles I had in a long time that lasted until I feel him push me back gently.

"I have to stop."

Dazed, I blurt out a bereft, "Why?"

"Well, the bike can to carry two," he says with a panting smile which is half grimace, "…but the kickstand was only meant to hold the bike. I've been taking a lot of the weight of both of us on my right leg…and it's about to give out."

"Oh." I had been feeling the tremors running through his thigh under my own. "I thought that was me."

"No," He retorts darkly, yanking my hips into his where I can feel...him. "That's you."

There's a mewling moan that must have come from me as I instinctively grind into him, eliciting an echoing groan from his throat as he kisses me deeply, digging his fingers into my backside until he pushes me back a second time. "Stop. Stop that. Sorry."

He dismounts on the high side and I follow, watching him put his weight on the left leg as he gingerly straightens the right out and rubs his thigh with a grunt and a curse.

"Oh God. Are you o.k.?" I shouldn't laugh.

It earns me a look of wry reprimand. "Yeah. Just needed to get the weight off it for bit."

"Sorry." I say sheepishly as I put myself back into place in my bra.

"Why?" He limps back toward me, tucking his T-shirt back in. "I'm not. Jeezus I'm not." He grabs a quick affectionate peck before gathering me close.

I don't care how strong you are, how mulishly independent you are, sometimes, just for a bit, it is really nice to just let someone hold you. To let the world slip away as you bury yourself in their scent and their warmth and in the encompassing strength of their embrace. We stand for a long while, watching the last red rays of the setting sun touch the distant sea before casting the world into soft grey shadow.

"I'm hungry."

His lips tilt into that lop sided smile and he shakes with silent laughter as he looks down at me, "Me too."

"Let's go."

...


	6. Chapter 6

Part VI

Supper is at the Dice ("I have to repay him for looking after my bike.") and the conversation is more topical than exploratory prodding, which I think is something of a relief for both of us. It's always interesting talking to people who have read, but not been told what to think about what they read. He does not disappoint. We talk Walden and Ginsberg and swap Lenny Bruce jokes. He hasn't gotten his hands on Li Po or the Taoists yet. I have only a scanty knowledge of modern philosophy. A brief foray into Kenneth Rexroth brings that lop-sided grin back as I feel my cheeks turn red while discussing the influence of "When We With Sappho". By the time I'm stealing the last of his chips we're hip deep in a discussion of Jazz, an interest most of his young protégés do not share.

"They're into Rock n' Roll, which is o.k. in its way." He draws on his cigarette, "Too structured. Too simple. More so now that the record companies have started white washing it."

"Yeah, now, but it doesn't have to stay that way. I can't think of a single music form that has remained static."

"Maybe, but at the moment there's no room for a Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk to come out and really play with the form. To really make it speak. Jazz was always fluid, of the moment. You go back to what it was during the war and then look at it now. It almost a completely different animal. Jazz can take anything, any song, and turn it into something else entirely."

"You're talking Coltrane."

"Exactly! The most banal sugary song, a kid's song, becomes something meaningful, something haunting."

"Most people are pretty unhappy with him right now."

Unsurprisingly, he brushes popular opinion aside. "They don't see what he is doing with the structure. How he is freeing the melody and the rhythm. How he is opening the door for others. In fact…" he glances over his shoulder to check the clock above the counter. "…you can see for yourself. Come on."

We take both bikes this time and I follow him to a small basement club in town. It's Saturday night and the joint is in full swing, but not unpleasantly crowded. Lots of younger people, but enough folk our age to make the atmosphere relaxed and "cool." My friend gets more than a few nods of greeting as he plows through the crowd at the bar to get us drinks.

He returns several minutes and a couple quick conversations with the bartender and another patron later. After handing me my gin and tonic, he steers me to where a band is setting up on a riser the size of a postage stamp. Steers. His hand on my back the entire time, he introduces me to the band including a gangling lad barely old enough to be in here whom he proudly declares to be "The best axe-man in the north."

"Jimmy." the kid says quietly, blushing from my companion's effusive introduction.

I tell him my name and shake his hand in return.

"Oh, you give *him* your name." my companion mock-pouts. "I've been with her since lunchtime and she hasn't told me yet."

"You haven't asked."

"He didn't either!" he protests over the band's knowing laughter.

"He gave me his."

"Oh, so that the way it works is it? Ricky." He sticks out a hand which I shake and repeat my name again.

After encouraging, no commanding, the band to "slay" tonight, Ricky steers me towards some comfortable couches at the back of the club. We chat for a few minutes about how long he has been coming here and the jazz scene in Durham before the band starts up.

He's right, the kid is blows a mean sax.

Ricky's arm is draped across the back of the couch as we enjoy the music in silence, giving me time to mull over things. Talking with Ricky is as easy a breathing, yet downright exhilarating, and I readily admit to myself that I enjoy his physical presence. Less readily I admit that I even enjoy the possessive gestures he made ever since we walked into the club. But given the rest of his character, I know what they mean. He has only broken into his rhetoric, a diatribe of rough polished rage at the educational establishment, once since we sat down to dinner, but it was enough to remind me what I am dealing with. The ever-simmering anger, the ego, and the dominance. And as much as Leo power-play can be a fun for an evening, or in certain arenas, with a personality like his I would have to engage in them constantly to maintain my own identity and autonomy in his eyes. The idea itself is exhausting. That is if there is a relationship. Monogamy is not something high on a Beat's priory list, if it appears on their list at all, and as progressive and independent as I am, I'm just not wired that way.

During the last song, his fingers start to toy with the back of my neck, taking a hearty whack at my resolve but not shaking it.

"You're not coming home with me, are you?" he says flatly as the last of the applause sputters out.

"No." He withdraws his arm with a look of smoldering disgust. "Before you go spouting off about the silly left over mores of a Victorian society, this is me. Alright? What we've done this evening, that was fun. This has been fun and I appreciate all of it. I know sex is not marriage and mortgage and a picket fence, but it does mean something more to me than an evening's entertainment. I spend the night with you, I'm going to be sticking around a while and I'm not sure either of us wants that. We had a beautiful moment. Let's just take it for what it is."

I find myself pinned under a piercing steel grey glare.

"You've been talking yourself out of it since we got here."

"What?"

"You have. You been sitting there the entire time working out reasons why you shouldn't come home with me. Jeezus, the bike, dinner, all this shifting, keeping us off course."

"That's not true!" Well, half-not true, I was actually hungry. "And you never asked if I wanted to take that "course." _Shit._ I silently kick myself for revealing the half lie and hope he doesn't catch it.

He does.

"How many faults, I wonder, did you tick off with that little clockwork brain of yours? How many problems did you have to conjure to overcome that moment? From the way you were kissing me earlier, I bet it's a list as long as your arm. Always the outsider watching, too afraid just be in the moment, to let anything really touch you."

"Are you actually *daring* me to sleep with you? Oh yeah. That's a wonderful reason to go to bed with someone. Look, real freedom is the freedom to say "Yes" *and* it is the freedom to say, "No." He looks away, unable to counter that argument. I look at stage, unable to look at him. "Please don't make this ugly. I had a wonderful time today, I really enjoyed being with you."

"So the truth is ugly?"

"Oh, you want the truth? The truth is you're too damn used to getting your own way."

We sit there glaring at each other. Somebody should throw a fiver on the table and dramatically storm out, but neither one of us wants to yield the field. Eventually the ridiculousness of situation strikes us both at the same time, and we start to smile...and then we start to laugh.

"O.k. perhaps I did get ahead of myself there."

I quietly and childishly thank the Gods he apologized first. _He started it._ "And perhaps I should have been clearer about my intentions rather than leading you on...Tho' it was really...wonderful."

"Yeah." He takes my hand in his. "It was that. I shouldn't have gotten angry with you just now."

"No. You shouldn't have..but.."

"But?"

"You didn't say anything that wasn't true. But that's my business."

He says nothing for a moment, looking down at his thumb stroking the back of my hand before nodding sagely. "Right."

Holy Hannah, the man can kiss. This one long and deep, deliberately trying to sear himself into my memory with pure physical passion.

It works.

But it's the kiss he leaves me with outside as we say our good-byes, the strains of Charlie Parker's, "All the Things You Are" coming from the jukebox within as he fires a parting shot of a long, sweet touch of his lips to mine. A gentle taste of breath and warmth. A sensual benediction...

…that was just plain dirty pool.

He releases me but he doesn't move, daring me to walk away. As I move back from him, my skin practically screaming for the loss of his warmth, a slight wrenching sensation my chest, he catches my hand and presses a chaste kiss into its back.

I think I manage to keep my knees steady as I mount and kick start my bike, though the fishtail as I bring it around probably kills any appearance of "cool". At the edge of the road I look back over my shoulder. He's sitting there on his bike. Watching me.

The damn man is waiting for me to turn around. For a one night stand!

Well, *that* level of ego is enough to send me cheerfully on my way. As I ride north looking for a hotel to crash for the night, I run down the litany of his perceived faults, our incompatible traits, and the probable ugly end of any relationship where he got sick of my intellectualizing and I got sick of his constant anger and ego. *If* there was a relationship on the table. *Which* there was not.

"No." I say to myself after a long hot shower in the first motel I come across, pulling the sheets up to my nose and curling up to sleep. "Much better this way. A lovely romantic memory. Done and over with."

Of course, I don't actually get to sleep until sometime after 3:00. In fact, I am dead asleep when the pounding on my door starts at 8:12.

Well, he certainly knows how to fill a doorway.

"So.." says he with deliberate casualness, rocking slightly forward as he half-hangs from the lintel, "...I was thinking it might not be so bad if you stuck around for a bit. I've only showed you a couple stretches along the coast. You probably haven't seen the Pennies or the Dales yet. Now those are real moors. One crap gothic novel and Yorkshire thinks they know...moors." His eyes have traveled down my t-shirt to my bare legs and when he reaches my ankle he cocks his head quizzically to the side, his smirk curling slowly into a smile full of lasciviously amused delight. "And you have a tattoo."

~Fin~


End file.
